


up and down

by popocco



Category: Gintama
Genre: A lot of weed, Established Relationship, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Oneshot, Recreational Drug Use, Suicidal Thoughts, as much of a "relationship" as takasugi is willing to let literally anything be but u kno, but there is still, it's just weed, this is as lighthearted and comedic a fic as i could have POSSIBLY written god i tried, vague and brief ones but they're still there. please take care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26785093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popocco/pseuds/popocco
Summary: just two guys hotboxing in deep space. can't beat it
Relationships: Sakamoto Tatsuma/Takasugi Shinsuke
Kudos: 16





	up and down

**Author's Note:**

> yahooooo folks it's me, everyone's idol of sporadic updating ;-3
> 
> FIRST OF ALL: i AM still working on breakup songs! i will never not be working on breakup songs until i finish it. but as you can see: The World, Currently. and i got on a real sktk thinking bender a couple nights ago, as i tend to do sometimes. 
> 
> i've had an idea for an introspective post-canon take on both their feelings (you fucking heard me right i said BOTH, fuck off sorachi), but it is gonna be sad as fuck just kinda by default, and i wanted to do something just like. nice. unfortunately, as we all know, takasugi pov is not predisposed to being a fun chill time on most occasions
> 
> thankfully! there's weed
> 
> alright enjoy, this is the shortest fic i've written in possibly a decade so as a special treat you don't gotta set a full hour and a half aside this time lol

Everything, from the moment that it starts to exist, is destined to die. That’s just the way the universe works. Even the universe itself has an end to it- it keeps moving farther and farther away, supposedly, faster than anything inside of it can observe, but the fact that it’s running is the most conclusive evidence there could possibly be that an end is really _there_. Death’s a coward. When it finally catches up to itself, is that when death gets to die, too? Takasugi thinks that’s more than death deserves. It makes him want to laugh a little, pointlessly.

Ahh, what is it about being out here outside the atmosphere that turns every fuckin’ person into some pretentious self-styled philosopher? He never bothered much about the “fine” arts before, beyond his morbid and casual affinity for the shamisen. (For all its visual elegance, an instrument made out of a dead cat with the nipples left on it. He appreciates the vulgarity.) It’s certainly not like staring out this porthole into The Great Beyond, or whichever purple epithet you could use to describe outer space, has awakened some latent interest in self-aggrandizing intellectualism he was previously unaware of.

Maybe it’s simply natural for any person born on a planet with a sky to turn introspective, when confronted with the absence of that. When they see for themselves that past their home’s reflection of its own oceans, they’re surrounded by all this nothingness.

Takasugi has come to like it, though perhaps still not become fully acclimated. How quaint, that there could be anything left at all to inspire even this trifling bit of _wonder_ in him. And that it’s the exact semantic opposite of “anything” itself! It’s silly, is what it is, foolish, and in this particular moment of time completely un-established in the absence of a star close enough to orbit, Takasugi finds feeling foolish pleasant.

“Watcha grinnin’ at so _wide_ over there,” Sakamoto drawls, with a drowsy chortle in every word.

Takasugi finds that pleasant too, he remarks to himself. So the man can laugh without shrieking like a gibbon after all, can he? There’s _two_ wonders now, for the price of one.

“Nothing,” he answers triumphantly, and scoffs at his own cleverness.

Sakamoto giggles sluggishly, truer to his default volume setting, and rolls off his stomach with a whole extra unnecessary rotation across almost the entire width of the mattress. He dangles one of his hairy, spindly legs over the side of the bed and swings it back and forth. It looks like it’s an upside down metronome needle.

“I _know_ yer messin’,” he accuses, and flops his pointer finger over at Takasugi with limp authority. “But I’ll letcha go, ‘cause I like seein’ ya look happy so much.”

Does he? Look happy, that is. 

(Takasugi already knows Sakamoto likes looking at him.)

Of course he’s not _actually_ happy. He’s pleased by a couple things, and just currently. The difference isn’t even worth quibbling over, so he won’t quibble. 

Better to move on from this. Thinking about happiness.

When’s the last time Takasugi thought about happiness?

He can’t remember. He can’t remember if he wants to remember.

Having looked away from the “scenery” beyond the “window” for long enough now, Takasugi notices that the air in the room has started to turn a bit opaque from all the smoke. It’s coloured a cool, slightly blue variety of grey, and the majority is twisting around lazily in long strands up near the ceiling with nowhere to vent and an approximation of Earth’s gravity and physics.

Against the dark metal forming this cabin’s walls, it looks something like... Hm. Familiar, certainly, but what specifically does this remind—

Ah! Semen in a bathtub. Observed upside down, but nevertheless.

Takasugi can’t recall how recently he’s fucked in a bathtub, but it does leave a highly memorable tableau.

He becomes slightly curious, about what manner of washing quarters Sakamoto has aboard this private luxury skiff of his. 

Ha! Probably a fully Japanese bathroom, with wooden flooring, going by the exchange they shared earlier about refreshments.

(Sakamoto said he took pains to build up his store of specifically Earth-made drinks and accompaniments so Takasugi wouldn’t “get homesick”.)

(Takasugi called him a sanctimonious fuckface, and immediately grabbed an armful of the most exorbitant looking packaged export delicacies he could discern at a glance.)

(The ones he’s sampled so far have all tasted very good.)

Either way Takasugi has no pressing need or desire for a bath at the moment, and more importantly, opening the vacuum locked door would be an absolutely terrible waste. So he tucks that thought away for later.

How _much_ later he is not quite sure. Perhaps sooner, rather than. Time does still march on without a star’s pull to measure it by. There are always things Takasugi must do.

And he does prefer to avoid the correspondences that occur when he spends too much time anywhere off-board the Kiheitai’s own principal vessel without notice.

(He already has seven unread text messages from Matako, and a single unnamed photo drop from Kamui, which he will be deleting outright the next time he sees the lock screen notification.)

Whensoever the opportunity may arise, Takasugi _will_ collect on the bathtub fuck he’s put himself slightly in the mood for. But at present he’s decided the level of haze in the room feels nice and agreeable as is, so he thinks he’ll empty out his pipe. There’s no dedicated ashtray in here, so they’ve been using an empty yogurt cup. It was just the cheap kind you get in dairy aisle bulk packs instead of some pompous artisanal shit, but it was good. Simple is better sometimes.

“Ooooh hey, ya done with that? Pass it here then.”

It feels almost instant- Sakamoto seems to react the very second Takasugi starts to even move his shoulder, but perhaps he’s experiencing an amount of cognitive lag, too, on his end. It’s still very fast, all factors considered.

Has he just been quietly watching Takasugi experience a bunch of trivial distractions this whole time? That certainly didn’t look very interesting. He must like looking at Takasugi an _awful_ lot, Christ.

Takasugi doesn’t really mind, particularly. He doesn’t understand, either. How staring at a guy who is doing absolutely nothing but think could be diverting enough to keep you from... anything else at all.

He doesn’t understand, or care to understand, but it’s fine by him if that’s how Sakamoto chooses to spend his time.

“Come get it yourself. Shit head.”

Takasugi is comfortable exactly where he is, on the pile of pillows and blankets he moved off the bed over to the porthole earlier, and he’s not getting up just yet if he can help it.

Sakamoto is laughing the way he always does, that, that fucking, “ _Ah———_ hahahaha _ha!_ ” with the _massive_ goddamn pause at the very start, that makes Takasugi want to just smash his face into a concrete wall. 

God.

The way it _lifts_ at the end, like an entire octave, is the downright most ludicrous thing that has ever pissed off Takasugi so badly in his whole entire fucking life. He can’t _stand_ it. From the first time he had to hear it, right after this son of a bitch _threw up on his head_ , he has fucking hated hearing Sakamoto laugh like this.

“Fuck, will you shut the fuck _up_?! The fuck is so _funny,_ huh? You wanna fuckin’ share?”

Not a terribly impressive display of vocabulary but Takasugi is not currently aiming to be nominated for any high literature awards.

“Mm, yeah, I just, like- Ahahaha— Have I ever toldja this?”

Sakamoto is turned ninety degrees counter-clockwise on his big empty bed, his big empty head hanging off the side now upside down with his bare feet propped up on the wall. His glasses are on the floor.

Why was he even wearing those goddamn things, indoors, in _outer space_? Takasugi wants to snap them right in half, but not as much as he wants to stay propped up on his pillow pile.

“How will I ever know what you’ve told me, or _if_ you’ve told me, if you never _actually tell me_? Just spit it out.”

He’d like to call Sakamoto some more names, but he still can’t quite come up with anything that isn’t “fuck” just now. Fuck.

“I’m _gonna_ , I’m tellin’ ya right now! This— ok, bear with me, yer gonna think this is kinda fucked up—“

This fucker thinks he knows what _Takasugi Shinsuke_ , the head of the Kiheitai, considers fucked up, does he?

Ahh fuck, that was just another “fuck” word as an insult again.

“Try me, just _say_ it already will you? We’re both adults here, Jesus.”

Sakamoto keeps having these _explosive_ giggle fits, every single time Takasugi asks _so_ goddamn patiently for him to get on with it. Like he’s the unsuspecting subject of some truly hysterical secret joke at his own expense. If it happens once fucking more, just once, Takasugi is going to throw an entire bottle of something within easy reach.

“Hehe, sorry sorry, m’ ssssorryyyy, hheeehehe— Ya keep _doin’_ it, see? An’ I just get sooo— Yer just— I just like it so _much_! How yer so _mean_ , an’ for no reason most a’ the time too. I probably shouldn’t, right? I do though. Dunno why, but I just like it. I kept thinkin’ about how I just like it.”

Alright, that is a _little_ fucked up. Not even slightly surprising, though, and hardly worth the entire academic foreword it got. Takasugi wasn’t expecting it but he’s still not highly impressed.

“‘S that so,” he responds curtly, decisively _un_ impressed, he’s realized.

“Ya mean... it’s ok?”

Sakamoto is still looking at him upside down, so it’s marginally more challenging to tell, but his cartoonish angular face looks a little worried. Hopeful? _Why_ , though. This is such a non-issue.

“Should it not be? I don’t care.”

There is probably not a single thing in all of creation that Sakamoto Tatsuma _doesn’t_ like so much it makes him giddy.

He’d _say_ he doesn’t like war, or killing, or seeing people die. He’s said it before, and to Takasugi himself, more than once. Takasugi has seen the gleeful adrenaline on his face before, though, executing any number of particularly efficient or graceful kills. The only time you can perform those without consequence _is_ war. Forget “like”- Sakamoto Tatsuma is head over heels in love with being alive, and _all_ those things are one and the same as this final immutable truth. 

He’s a liar. He likes lying a lot, too.

That, at least, is something Takasugi does understand.

“Really?”

For fuck’s sake, is he _still_ hung up on this shit?

“It’s really ok?”

He looks even more worried-hopeful now than he did before, which does not make a _lick_ of motherfucking sense considering Takasugi literally _just_ told him that it’s ok.

Well not _literally._ Not in those precise words, in that exact order. 

Was he always such a picky conversationalist, to be looking downright desperate for an echo, and of something so trivial? What a pain in the ass. Takasugi is sick of the face Sakamoto is making about it, so he’ll indulge in this pointlessness.

“ _Yes_ , it’s _ok_ that you like that I’m mean for no reason.”

Takasugi even makes bloody eye contact about it, with an entirely natural scowl on, which he would not have if he was _joking_ or trying to lead this utter pinhead _on_ anywhere. He is being spectacularly cooperative, and if Sakamoto still doesn’t get it then he really will be forced to throw something.

It takes _several_ seconds for Takasugi’s exceedingly clear and conclusive statement to get through, but Sakamoto does finally stop making that weird and annoying face. Thank fucking god. It’s changed into one of his more bombastic smiles, the kind that fills at least a full half of his mug with grin and really squeezes the other half together, and that’s annoying too. Not in the same way, though, and Sakamoto is just an annoying person in general. Being annoying is simply what he does by nature.

“Annoying” has started to not feel very much like a word anymore, suddenly. Takasugi hates it when this shit happens, urgh. Weird.

“Yay,” is all Sakamoto says, and has begun to wiggle his toes around up on the wall.

Takasugi does not want to look at Sakamoto’s toes moving very much, so he goes back to looking at the big old empty universe instead out his porthole.

He remembers, then, that he’s still just been holding his lit pipe this entire time instead of puffing on it or putting it out. He forgot what that arm was doing for a bit. Figured it was just doing whatever it was supposed to.

“Last chance to come smoke some more, or I’m really gonna put it out,” Takasugi warns, with his eye on a slightly red-coloured star some hundreds of thousands of human lifetimes away.

That’s far too many lifetimes. Just one is too many, most of the time. It’s difficult for him to wrap his head around.

There’s some squeaking and shuffling around behind him, and Sakamoto bleats, “Yuuuuup, just, gimme a sec over here, I’m comin’. Oof.”

Takasugi sure is acting _very_ nice, right now.

Sakamoto likes it when he’s mean, they have mutually taken pains to establish recently. Does he like it when Takasugi is acting nice? Does he not like it?

Haha. Takasugi would like it if Sakamoto didn’t like something about him. How fun.

Takasugi doesn’t like that Sakamoto likes him being mean. But he doesn’t dislike it, either. He doesn’t feel very much at all about it.

That’s what Takasugi _does_ like.

It’s a little similar, maybe, to how he’s come to enjoy just floating adrift in outer space like this. Off-planet, almost incalculably far from anything or anyone.

No sound, no silence, just nothing.

There’s light, distantly, in many places, but it’s so far away it may as well be showing through little mosquito bite pinpricks in the fabric of nonexistence itself. Tens of thousands of times one human lifetime away. Impossibly far away.

Takasugi is able to feel close sometimes, in outer space, to not existing. Feeling nothing at all, being nothing at all. 

Becoming sheer nothing... that might make him happy.

He can’t become nothing just yet. There are always things Takasugi must do. But every now and again, when he finds time to cruise along out here where time has nothing to measure itself by, he can feel even just a tiny bit closer to that. It feels nice. He likes feeling this way.

Sakamoto has loudly fallen off the bed, loudly had several attacks of laughter about it, and loudly crawled or rolled or somersaulted or _something_ through a bunch of empty packaging to Takasugi’s favourite spot on the pillows. The back of his head lands across Takasugi’s left arm and part of his ribcage. His hair feels very thick and soft.

“Phew!” Sakamoto exclaims. And then he says, “Alrighty, I’m here. Gimme that.”

Takasugi feels Sakamoto’s hair move down over his arm, so maybe he’s being looked at upside down again. The back of Sakamoto’s forearm brushes Takasugi’s middle for a second, then moves on. And then Sakamoto’s knobby, rough fingers manage to find the wrist supporting the pipe, and climb awkwardly up the rest of the way to relieve it from duty.

“Thank yooouuuuu,” he coos contentedly, and lifts the pipe away along with his fingers.

“It’s _great_ when yer mean, but I like it a helluva lot when yer nice ta me, too. Hehe.”

Figures. Oh well.

“This thing got a bathtub on it anywhere?” Takasugi asks.

**Author's Note:**

> i mentioned it in the end notes of "arm's length" very briefly, but it IS a significant part of my personal canon for these two to just kinda waste time together every once in a blue moon once the ice has broken a little. i've still gotta work out how things get from that rather tense reunion to here, so be on the lookout for a potential exploration of that in... the expanse of linear time, maybe? shrug


End file.
